8th September 2008

Hey everyone!

First of all, apologies for the lack of communication, as you’ve probably gathered, it’s been a busy time.

I read in a book (I can’t remember what one, I’ve read too many recently) somewhere that “The night is darkest just before the dawn.” Whether or not that is a scientific fact, it’s certainly been the case here over the last couple of weeks for me.

Over the last two weeks (and the last week in particular), I’ve been reminded of what I’ll be leaving behind here, be it friendships or churches. As a result of that, the truth that I’m less than five weeks away from leaving Cardiff has hit me like a brick.

Until this past weekend, I was stuggling to come to terms with that, and just a bus ride home from work through the city was enough to get my emotions running high, one particular day last week.

Things have moved on now though, and I’m feeling a lot more positive about things, and that was helped by the first message in my Church’s latest series, which is entitled You Don’t Have What It Takes.

The next couple of weeks will be really busy as I prepare for the move. Your prayers would be appreciated during this time.

Thanks for reading

T Minus 1 Month and Counting!

Hey everyone!

First of all, sorry for the lateness of this post. I’ve been struggling with illness all week, and only just feeling better now,

Anyway, last week I was at a massive conference called New Wine Wales. I was technically on the worship team, but I was putting the song words onto the screen. Below is a photo of the “on stage” worship team.

God moved powerfully throughout the week, people were being healed, and in the Youth area, people were being saved. It was awesome to be there this year, and I can’t wait to see what happens next year.

Anyway, The Open Door is less than a month away from the official launch weekend of the 13th-14th September. We’re planning a full weekend event, with MicroMissions on the Saturday, with the Launch Service on the Sunday.

The move is progressing, and there’ll be something more definite announced here on that soon.

Next week the leaders of the Open Door (Chris & Dana) are in town for a visit of Caerphilly Castle (8 miles north of Cardiff) with Chris’ parents, so I’ll be meeting up with them.

Thanks for reading.

Keith

July 2008 – Snapshots

Hey everyone!

First of all, major apologies for leaving this un-updated for nearly a month now. SO many things have happened, so here’s a snapshot of the last month (as promised to some people)

LONDON: Things are moving along vvvveeeerrryyyy slowly at the moment, but as the church now has an official launch date (check here for info on that), things will now start moving along at a quicker pace. The pilot services (one of which I had the privilege of attending) have been going really well, according to Chris & Dana, so that’s good, and hopefully we’ll be able to launch this church with a lot of momentum behind us.

All this means I’ve now got a tentative moving date of Sept. 8th 2008, which only gives me about six weeks or so to get everything sorted out, but hey, God’s a God of the impossible, right?

CARDIFF: As you can imagine, things are starting to wind down for me here as I get ready for the move. I had major Internet connection problems this morning. which enabled me to visit a church that I hadn’t visited in a while. Everyone knows of the London stuff via a mutual friend at the Church, so it was great just to update everyone on what the latest was, and I’ll be returning there one Sunday night before I head off to give a little info to everyone there.

I’m away from next weekend at a conference called New Wine Wales. I’ve been involved with it for a few years now (I’m a associate member of the worship team which means that I’m involved in the worship, but not actually playing an instrument!), so I’m looking forward to seeing what God does there this year. I’ll blog up a report when I get back.

Thanks for reading!

Update – 30th June 08

Hey everyone!

It’s been an insane couple of weeks since my last post, so just a quick summary for you all.

The weekend in London was awesome! I spent Saturday afternoon at the local fair in Wimbledon (which apparently is a annual event always held the weekend before the Championships), and it was a good day meeting people, and getting a feel for all the different things that go on there.

Sunday morning was spent at Hillside, where the “One Prayer” series continued with a special guest speaker. He ended up speaking in general on prayer, but it was great to hear some of his insights. Also, it was great to meet everyone at Hillside, and it’s going to be great to work with the guys there as we seek to see God’s kingdom come to Wimbledon.

Sunday afternoon was spent in Hyde Park, just relaxing ahead of heading home, and I headed up to Speakers Corner to see what all the fuss was about, and it was interesting to see all these different people “preaching” about different things that they believed in. While I was there, I had the opportunity to speak to some Messianic Jews who were there just sharing their message. It was such an encouragement to me to see them there, and to pray with them before I headed back.

Since that weekend, I’ve just been busy with work and preparations ahead of the move, but God seems to be using every single opportunity to speak to me about things in London, and how things are going to be there. It’s awesome to see that, and it’s firing me up even more for what God’s going to do.

Thanks for reading.

Keith

…And we’re off!!!

So things are finally falling into place for everyone. Jayma arrives in London next week, and she’ll be soon joined by Chris and Dana Byers, who have had a protracted battle with the authorities in the US for their visas to be approved. They were finally approved today, so they’ll be arriving back in the UK within the next two weeks.

I’m in Wimbledon this weekend to visit the church that will be hosting all of our activities, so that should be a good weekend.

Thanks for reading

Update

Hey everyone, Hope you’re all ok.

Just wanted to get out a bit of an update for everyone.

Work is going great at the moment, we’re about to start a new round of training in order to do a completely different task, because in doing (and completing) the first task, we created a backlog of work in the second!

Church has been awesome recently, amongst other things, I now lead a LifeGroup, and with One Prayer having started this past weekend, I now feel we’re into a momentus time. God is moving, people!

London update: I’ve been invited to lead what will become the youth program at the Network Church (AKA The Open Door). I’ve done a bit of youth leadership before, but something on this scale is completely different to anything I’ve done in the past! Prayers would be appreciated as I begin to step into this role.

Also, I’ll be heading to Hillside (the Church that is graciously allowing us to use their building for the services) in a couple of weeks to meet some of the people there, so I’m looking forward to that.

Finally, I’d love to know if there’s anything I can pray for you guys for.

Thanks for reading,

Keith

One Prayer – Update

Hey guys.

I was in LifeChurch this morning when they gave everyone an update on One Prayer (see here for more info). There is now an amazing 800+ churches signed up from across the globe, and different streams and denominations are involved.

That for me is an amazing sign of what God is doing in his church right now. People from all sorts of church backgrounds and “labels” are beginning to realise that the church is so much more than just what they’re comfortable with. God is on the move!

Thanks for reading,

Keith

12th May 2008

Hey everyone! Hope this finds you all ok.

Well, I’m still recovering a tiny bit from the madness that was the Ignite Hope weekend. I almost didn’t wake up at all on Tuesday morning for work, and I spent the rest of last week in a mad state between tiredness and having loads of energy! It was a great weekend though, and I’ve managed to pop all my photo’s from the weekend onto a Flickr account, so you can take a look at a snapshot of the weekend for yourselves, but a word of warning, the photo’s are running backwards, due to the order I uploaded them.

Work’s going ok, and the team moved into their new part of the building today, so I spent the majority of the day getting adjusted to new surroundings. One of the great things about where I’m working is the view out of the windows, as you can see a lot of South East Wales coast from there (I wish I could take some photos, but apparently, it’s not allowed, due to it being a government owned building).

Anyway, I’ve got to go. Have a good week everyone!

Thanks for reading,

Keith

Ignite Hope

Hey everyone! I’m back after a long weekend at Ignite Hope. For those who don’t know what is was all about, it was a weekend of doing good deeds in the name of Jesus. The days were broken down like this:

• 9:30am: Morning Worship
• 10:45am: Break into teams
• 11:00am-12:30pm: Travel to assigned area.
• 12:30-5:15pm: Social Action projects (more on what we did later)
• 5:15-7:00pm: Dinner, then travel back to main area in Cardiff city centre.
• 7:30-9:00pm: Evening Meeting
• 9:15pm A Music Gig featuring a Christian group every night

I was co-leading a team that went out to a couple of villages in the northern part of South Wales called Pontyclun and Mountain Ash (For the international audience among you, ask me for the pronounciations of the towns another time!). Saturday was spent painting a Church hall in Pontyclun. The people who had organised our projects (they were two local Pastors) were only expecting about 9 people, but there were 16 people in our group! In the end, they had to find extra things for us to do, because we had finished the initial job so quickly!

Sunday afternoon, and most of Monday too, was spent refurbishing a garden in a village outside Mountain Ash, that had been created originally as a community project for a TV show here. Unfortunately, it had fallen into a state of disrepair, so we refurbished it with new plants, cleaned up the rubbish that had colelcted around the site, and even relaid the main sign of welcome into the site.

As well as that, Monday was also spent painting the kitchen of the aforementioned Church Hall, as well as some houses. We acheived a lot (we apparently did the equivalent of a whole month’s work in three days!), but here are some of my personal highlights from the weekend:

• As one of the leaders in the group, it was great to see the passion the guys in the group had, both for God, and for the things we were doing. Nornally, it should be the leaders inspiring them to get passionate about it, but it was them that inspired me!
• Joy (who was the Pastor of the Church whose hall we painted) told me that when she walked ito the hall on Sunday morning  to see how it looked finished and dry, she began to cry when she realised just what had been acheived. She also told me that because the Church is getting quite elderly in age, she knew that they would not have been able to do this themselves.
• A total of 6 young people became Christians as a result of the work we’d been doing this weekend.

As if that wasn’t enough, I was also a member of the Prayer ministry team for the weekend, where again, God did some amazing things. I was paired up with an old friend for the weekend, and amongst other things:

• We were able to personally lead one person to Jesus, and prayed with another right after they’d done the same.
• We prayed for another whose Grandmother had breast cancer (a theme very close to my heart, but that’s another story for another time).

So in short, God did some amazing things over the weekend. As a closing thought, the one thing that had driven me all weekend (apart from God of course!) was LifeChurch’s mission statement:

To lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ.

I felt that the whole team, even if the majority of them hadn’t heard the phrase before this weekend, managed to do just that, and I am so proud of what God was able to do through us!

Thanks for reading.

Video Blog, Take 1!

Below is a video recorded as a test of my new webcam and headset.

Thanks for watching!